WordPress MU

Hey all!

I want to know if there is a way to control widgets on a mu install where all blogs are using the same theme so that I can add a widget and it is added to all the blogs. I do not want to have to go into 100's of blogs and activate a widget each time I find a new one I want on every blog.

Thanks in advance.
LK

But surely isn't the idea of WPMU that people can pick and choose?

Of course that is the idea. But when you are creating something for a client and it needs to be that way, well that's what you have to do.

LK

Why a widget then? Widgets are things hte users can move off the sidebar if they *don't* want it.

If you want to add things to all sidebars so users cannot remove them, don't use widgets - hardcode it in the theme's sidebar template.

I would hardcode it outside of the widget loop. If you code it within the loop, it'll disappear once a client adds in their own widgets.

The thing is what I want is when there is a new widget that I want to use I want it on all of the blogs. So I can't hardcode something into the sidebar if I dont't know what it is yet.

So when a widget is found or the client ask can I have this put on my website I can just add them to all the blogs at once and not have to go around and activate them on every blog.

Thanks,
LK

You know when you add a new plugin, it shows up for everyone, right? Then each client can determine if they:

a) want to activate it
and
b) where they want it on their sidebar.

YEs I know that. But what I want is not to have to activate it. What I am looking for is a way to control all sidebars of all the blogs all at once.

Right now I am trying to get it to work where I use one blog that has the widgets setup on it and use that to populate the other blogs.

Right now I have it semi working with using the switch_to_blog(1) function before I call !dynamic_sidebar('right-column'). This works it pulls the widgets that are set for blog_id 1 but only some widgets are working.

I am looking for the same thing. If I remember it well dsader had a solution for our problem... long, long time ago. It should be somewhere on these forums. I'm using MrBrian's plugin which automatically puts widgets in sidebar for all new blogs that are created. The problm is that when you modify it changes will take effect only on blogs that are about to be created.

This plugin may help:

http://plugins.paidtoblog.com/wpmu-power-tools/

But I have never tested it... cause I don't want to do some major mistake and kill all of my blogs;) It says in description it is "Intended mainly for advanced users with knowledge of PHP" which I'm not. I'm only good at modifying other people code;)

So MrBrian, if You're here somewhere, what code should we use with this plugin to add new widgets (Links - for example) across all existing blogs?

It looks like you haven't found a way to have one set of widgets to applied to all blogs. I want to do that too. If a way has been found, please share it! Meanwhile, I will be manually reproducing the blogroll and widget across 11 blogs. :-(

@Ingenuity : did you discover a solution? I am facing the same issue so I'm curious whether you found an approach that works.

Look at the code in this plugin:
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/wpmu-blog-defaults

DeannaS, that one, or this one? (yours?)

http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/New-Blog-Defaults